Nadine Kenney Johnstone has always surrounded herself with words. As a child in the Southside of Chicago, Nadine found herself nose-deep in countless books, drawing strength and understanding from the narratives within. Her local library was where her passion for literature bloomed, where she learned to nurture relationships with her loved ones and make sense of her surroundings. Her resilience in overcoming hardships, including bouts of intense burnout and panic attacks, has been nothing short of inspirational. In recognizing the potential of the written word to forge deep personal connections, Nadine embarked on a journey as a full-time writing coach. She established her organization, WriteWELL, with the mission of uniting wellness and writing through retreats and workshops. Nadine’s podcast, Heart of the Story, amplifies the heartfelt narratives of writers she’s worked alongside. Her goal? To empower as many women as possible, encouraging them to share their most vulnerable moments with the world. In this conversation, Nadine pulls back the curtain on her own experiences with overwork and the invaluable life lessons she learned in her early years about tenacity and perseverance. She also highlights the power of personal narratives and the freedom in being able to pivot at any stage of one's journey.
Nadine Kenney Johnstone has always surrounded herself with words.
As a child in the Southside of Chicago, Nadine found herself nose-deep in countless books, drawing strength and understanding from the narratives within. Her local library was where her passion for literature bloomed, where she learned to nurture relationships with her loved ones and make sense of her surroundings. Her resilience in overcoming hardships, including bouts of intense burnout and panic attacks, has been nothing short of inspirational.
In recognizing the potential of the written word to forge deep personal connections, Nadine embarked on a journey as a full-time writing coach. She established her organization, WriteWELL, with the mission of uniting wellness and writing through retreats and workshops. Nadine’s podcast, Heart of the Story, amplifies the heartfelt narratives of writers she’s worked alongside. Her goal? To empower as many women as possible, encouraging them to share their most vulnerable moments with the world.
In this conversation, Nadine pulls back the curtain on her own experiences with overwork and the invaluable life lessons she learned in her early years about tenacity and perseverance. She also highlights the power of personal narratives and the freedom in being able to pivot at any stage of one's journey.
Learn more about WriteWELL here. Listen to Heart of the Story.
In this episode, we cover:
Quote of the Week:
“Talent can only take you so far. You have to have the dedication and endurance to stay the course. And the writers that I coach who have the endurance over the talent will always succeed." Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Hosted by Katherin Vasilopoulos. Made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee.
Music by © Chris Zabriskie, published by You've Been a Wonderful Laugh Track (ASCAP).
Songs used in this episode include: "Air Hockey Saloon," "Short Song 022423," "Short Song 011123," "$50 to Breathe," "Does It Exist or Do I Have to Create It?," "Stories About the World That Once Was," "Can You Even F---ing Imagine Being A Teenager Today?," "Maybe Tomorrow All My Dreams Come True," "Chance, Luck, Errors in Nature, Destruction as a Finale."
Used under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License
[00:00:00.120] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Hi, I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos. Starting my own venture wasn't easy. After a decade working in the corporate world, I realized that so many things were out of my control, like layoffs and changes in direction. I didn't like the instability. I didn't want that to define my whole career and professional story. And so I left. I started my own company and achieved more than I ever imagined. Now I'm on a mission to share stories from extraordinary entrepreneurs who are changing the world and who never gave up on their vision. In our last episode, we talked about legacy. If we're lucky, our life stories persist resounding long after we've moved on to our next chapter. But sometimes we need a bit of help to share our stories with the world.
[00:00:58.900] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
As soon as she was old enough to read, Nadine Kenney Johnstone fell in love with books. She saw the library as her home away from home, growing up on Chicago's South Side. And books have been a constant companion throughout her life. They've helped her to navigate relationships with her parents and friends and simply make sense of her environment. Loving literature and connecting with others who share her passion has also presented Nadine with gifts.
[00:01:24.720] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
She's tough, she's resilient, and she's overcome immense challenges like severe burnout and panic attacks. Recognizing the power of the written word to strengthen personal connections, Nadine became a full-time writing coach and founded Write Well. It's an organization that seamlessly combines wellness and writing through retreats and work shops. And on her podcast, Heart of the Story, she shares some of the incredibly intimate personal stories of writers she's worked with. In our conversation, Nadine opens up about her personal struggles with being severely overworked, the invaluable lessons she learned as a child about persistence, and the advantages of having the freedom to pivot throughout her journey. She also speaks about the impact of personal stories and her mission to help as many women as she can to share the most difficult and vulnerable moments in their lives with the world.
[00:02:21.560] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Hello, Nadine. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. We're really excited to be talking to you today.
[00:02:27.850] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
I am so thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:31.660] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I'm really curious to know more about your current endeavor called WriteWELL. Tell me more about that.
[00:02:39.820] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. So I lead writing and wellness workshops and retreats for women, and it is one of my greatest joys. I was just talking about it with my son last night. He's 10, and he, for some reason, was asking me about what life will be like when he goes to college. And he mentioned that he wants to be a sculptor. And he said, but how can you make a living doing that? And I said, buddy, if I had thought about how to make a living as a writer, I probably would have quit. Essentially, I lead a lot of online workshops. I have a writing community, and we call ourselves the writer workout community, and we meet every Monday on Zoom. I give craft talks and prompts, and then we write together. It's like a workout for our creativity, and we celebrate and help each other through different periods of life. In addition to that, I lead other types of writing workshops. But then my retreats are a true blend of writing and wellness. So sometimes they're for non writers, and I just include journaling and part of the wellness things that we do. And sometimes they are more writing center, they're writing intensive, and I sneak wellness into the things that we do.
[00:04:07.280] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
How did you get started in writing? When did the writing bug come into your life?
[00:04:13.180] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Very early on. I was a total book nerd. So I grew up on the south side of Chicago, and the West Lawn Public Library was my second home. I loved books. Essentially, when I came out of the womb, I have been a book lover. I would walk home from school reading books as I would walk. One time, one of my friends said, I don't like sitting next to you at the lunch table at school because you just read the whole time. So I I mean, I just love books. And I wrote my first novel when I was in third or fourth grade. It was called Prisoner of Fate. It was very serious. But then when I went to college, I was going to be a nutritionist because I had a very deep curiosity about health and what we put into our bodies and how that affects us. And then I got to University of Illinois and took one chemistry class and almost flunked out of College, and I had to turn things around. And I switched to an English major. I took one really, really pivotal writing class my junior year, and there was something there.
[00:05:33.020] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
It was like a spark was reignited inside of me, and the teacher was incredible. And she told me there was something called an MFA that you could go to graduate school and basically just spend two years writing a book with guidance from incredible professors. And I was like, Wait a minute, this is an actual thing. You can do this as a graduate program. And the rest is history. But I went to Columbia College in Chicago, and I was just from morning until night, completely consumed in words. And it was one of my most creative and productive periods of my entire life. And I worked at Chicago Magazine as a fact checker, and they let me write a few articles. So I got to be in the world of professional magazine writing, which was very, very fun. And it was just almost I look back and I'm like, what a glamorous life I had for a couple of years there. I would go to Chicago, take the train in, walk to Michigan Avenue, go to this beautiful magazine office, and just be in the midst of these incredible writers. And then I would walk to night school at Columbia.
[00:06:53.630] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And then on my weekends, I would just work on my book all day long. I spent two years doing that. And it was really great. And then I became a professor, and then I wrote books, and on and on it goes. But writing has been everything to me.
[00:07:10.470] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
You did a lot early on, which is really impressive. Yeah.
[00:07:16.530] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
But before people think that... I don't know, I resist the urge to make it seem too easy or too everything went smoothly because what I often talk about too is that when I applied to graduate school, I was rejected by eight out of the 10 grad schools and two of them waitlisted me. And I think really the only reason why I got into Columbia is because I hounded them via telephone every week until they finally accepted me. I had a lot to prove. I was 21 when I entered my grad school program and I was in there with people who had actually lived quite a life, people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. And my writing was very naïve and elementary when I started that program. And I owe that program for really teaching me what writing is and how to be a lifelong writer. I don't know where I'd be without that program.
[00:08:24.740] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
What values did this program bring into your life?
[00:08:29.060] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
It was different than what most people think of within MFA program. A lot of MFA programs, you come in with drafts already created, and then you workshop them, and there's very heavy editing, and sometimes there's really a cutthroat mentality. Columbia was completely different. They focused on the developmental aspect of writing, and so many of my initial classes and workshops were us sitting in a semi circle, visualizing our scenes, what would they look like? What would our stories look like if they were a movie in our minds? And then acting out the gestures with our bodies and then telling the stories out loud, verbally, before we ever put pen to page. And then we would write in class, longhand, in a notebook, computers were not allowed. And then towards the end of the semester, we would bring in drafts that the teachers would never grade and mark up. They would just collect them over time. And when they finally felt like you were onto something, they would read anonymously excerpts of your pieces out loud to the workshop group. And then the people in the group would just repeat which lines and details were working well.
[00:09:57.000] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And constructive criticism was really formed into questions. It was like, what do you want to know more about as a reader? Or when you hear this person's story, what makes you curious? What characters do you want to know more about? So it was everything. And it completely imprinted the way that I teach writing.
[00:10:22.650] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's an interesting feedback system where you get it instantly and you get it from your peers and you get to hear about what they want to hear next in the story, or what do they want to hear developed in the story versus what's something that's less interesting. And I guess that guides you into your writing process. Do you remember any stories that stick out?
[00:10:43.680] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. All year, my freshman semester, none of my stories were read out loud. And then finally, I wrote a story that was, quote unquote, fiction based on non-conviction about a boyfriend that my dad did not approve of and just how tension filled that time was of navigating that landscape. And that was the first time that the professor was... You could tell that she was just like, You finally understand conflict and how conflict drives a scene. Something needs to happen in your stories because up until that point, I was just ruminating on the page. It was a lot of just thinking on the page rather than scene driven work.
[00:11:45.160] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It just felt more like maybe journaling as opposed to having an arc to a story.
[00:11:50.780] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Completely. And I learned so much more about my writing from the other stories that I heard from the individuals in that cohort. And there were incredible individuals in that cohort, like Ingrid Rohas. She just wrote a book about maybe a year or two ago that has won incredible awards. And the professors that I studied under were stellar. So it was honestly more about what was being modeled before me than even about my own work. I learned so much from the other people there.
[00:12:28.440] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Can you describe maybe what your parents influence was on your writing and your love of reading?
[00:12:34.360] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. A few different things. One, I think it might have been my mom, but them getting me a library card was I don't even think they understood how pivotal that would be for me. It gave me a sense of...
[00:12:51.760] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's the best as a kid. Yes.
[00:12:53.980] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
It gave me such a sense of agency. And they loved that I loved reading, though, neither of them, and I should say, my parents are divorced. And so my mom and father divorced when I was very young, one years old. I was actually born in Hawaii. My father was in the military there. My parents got divorced and we ended up moving back to Chicago, where they're from. And my mom remarried. And so I grew up with my mom and my step dad, whom I called dad and then my sister. So my mom and dad, really, neither of them were readers. And so I never really saw it modeled, but I had this deep love of books. Well, my father, whom I spent Sundays with him, he was a big reader, but of more technical books, computer software books. And so our bonding thing that we would do together is go to bookstores. That was how we learned to get navigate our relationship, even though we didn't have a ton of time together. And so there was that. And then as I was growing up, my mom and step dad, they really encouraged whatever I wanted to do.
[00:14:18.190] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And I never had the, you can't do that, or you have to go for a more practical, lucrative career. That pressure was never on me because they didn't grow up in that environment. They both grew up very hard working, just make your own way. And then I think that they were just excited for me to be in an area of knowledge and learning that I loved. So when they saw my report card that freshman year of college and saw that that chemistry and my other nutrition classes were not going so well, they told me really quickly that I had to turn things around because they weren't going to pay tuition for me to waste time and party my behind off. And so when I switched to an English major, I think they were all just relieved because they knew that was an area that I loved. And then when I went to grad school, my mom was the one who said, someone I know has a daughter who's a an intern at Chicago Magazine. You should really apply for an internship there. You should, you should, you should. You should. You should. After her eighth urging, I finally did.
[00:15:40.320] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
So all along, they have been incredibly supportive of me as a writer. And when I recently left my full-time professor job a couple of years ago, I was self conscious about how maybe my mom would feel about that because I knew it was a great sense of pride that I was a professor given that most of the people in our family, well, none of them had ever been professors. And like I said, I was the first to go to college. And so when I said, mom, I'm leaving my professor job and I'm starting my own business. I didn't know if there would be a pinch of like, let down. And we just talked about it the other day. And she said, I couldn't be more proud that you left something stable in order to follow your heart, essentially.
[00:16:33.280] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I love that they are supportive of the creativity and the imagination that comes with writing and being in the creative arts and that they didn't push you into some business endeavor or anything that didn't resonate with you.
[00:16:51.110] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. And I think that because my mom, my dad, my father, they all had to follow a nonconventional path, or they at least all chose to follow a nonconventional path. So I think that's why they had more tolerance for it. So my mom went from being a bank teller to a bank manager and then left that and now is a massage therapist at a hospital and helps women basically rehabilitate after they've given birth. It's a job she loves, loves, loves. And when I was going into grad school, my dad was basically taking night classes to get a bachelor's degree. And then my biological father, he did a bunch of night classes and then got a million different kinds of certificates. And his focus was software and a lot of work with computers. But it's like each of them had to make their own way without having any models because my grandparents, all of them on all sides were really blue collar workers, truck drivers. My other grandfather worked for the railroad. And so none of my parents had this road modeled for them, and they had to go their own way. And so I think they encouraged that.
[00:18:23.160] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It sounds like there's a lot of determination involved in taking your faith in your own hands. It just shows that you don't stay in the same place for too long if that's not what makes you happy. Your family has that thread in it, I think, based on what you're telling me. And so do you find that you also have that ability to change directions, to take decisions, or to make decisions quickly in order to satisfy what's happening in your life at any given moment?
[00:18:52.970] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. I think what I've learned is that nothing has to be permanent. You can change your situational setup. You don't have to stay in something that makes you unhappy, even if it's a great thing, and even if it's something that you worked really, really hard at. Leaving it doesn't have to mean failure. It doesn't have to mean anything. It means that it was a period of your life that was successful and satisfying for what it was. And then you changed and it changed and it was time to move on to something else. So it helped erase this stigma around leaving, truly. I think that's really what it is, is that there wasn't a sense of, Oh, if you don't stick this out, then there's failure or you're betraying the industry or what have you. So it was that it was a fostering a trust in myself. They modeled that for sure about how do we take leaps that might seem impractical to us other people. And they were all very innovative. We didn't come from means, and yet if my grandmother would always say, when there's a will, there's a way. And if you want something, you figure out a way to make it happen.
[00:20:19.820] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Like when money was tight, right? If you grew out of your winter boots and you didn't have new winter boots, then what you do is you put plastic bags over your sock foot, and then you put that foot into a gym shoe, and now it's a waterproof shoe. And just stuff like that. You make it happen. I remember when I was living on my own in grad school, I had a tiny studio apartment in Lincoln Park in Chicago. It was like, oh, well, I run out of toilet paper, I'll just use Kleenex.
[00:20:55.540] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's it. Make it work.
[00:20:58.590] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
You just make it work.
[00:21:01.790] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Exactly. Oh, my God. And so speaking of toilet paper, I'm going to go to the pandemic. The pandemic now just pops into my head.
[00:21:07.800] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Oh, what a good transition. Look at you. That was a. Great segue.
[00:21:12.280] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Yes, thank you. What I was going to say is you were a professor for a while, and then you get to this moment of the pandemic, and I want to hear about how did that transition happen, or if there were other steps in between that I may have missed. But tell me more about that phase of your life and when you started your workshops.
[00:21:30.660] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
After I graduated from grad school, I moved to Massachusetts. That's where my husband is from, and we had been dating long distance in grad school. And so as soon as I got my degree, I moved to Massachusetts and we got engaged, got married, and bought a house and had our son. And so all the while living there, I was a professor and was writing. And then when our son was a year old, I was deeply missing my village to help raise this beautiful little being because my family was still in the Midwest. And so I convinced my nature loving husband to move from rural Massachusetts to the heart of Chicago in a third floor walk up apartment. I mean, the most impractical place for people who have a one year old son and all the strollers and all the things. So that was our first big leap. Then we lived in Illinois for years, and I was working as a full-time professor at a university there in Chicago. And basically speed up to 2020, by that point, I had been a professor for 13 years, and I'd worked my way up to finally having benefits.
[00:22:47.120] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
You would think that once you get there, that's the place you want to stay because it finally feels secure. But on this side, I've been going to these writing conferences and also coaching women writers. And that just happened naturally. A writer at one of the conferences said, I really like the way you teach when I hear you present and I'm working on this book and I really need help getting it to the finish line. And she was in her late 70s and she said, I want to leave a legacy and I want to get this book out in the world, basically, before it's too late. I was coaching on the side and teaching writing workshops at organizations on nights and weekends. And so by the time 2020 came around, I was at a burnout point because my typical day was waking up at 4:45 AM. The house was dark. I'd get in my car, I'd drive most of the way to the city. I had about an hour and 15, sometimes hour and a half commute. I would go to a workout place or yoga studio, get in my movement, and then be in the office by 7:30, the latest, teach all day, no breaks, get in my car at 2:15 to speed home to get my son off the school bus at 3:30, and then spend some time.
[00:24:15.890] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Then my husband and I would do dinner. He would get home from his office job. And then it was basically an hour, maybe, of quality time before then packing all the bags for the next day. I'm rushing, rushing, rushing.
[00:24:28.660] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
I didn't realize that the time that I had any other options because quite frankly, while everyone thinks that a professor job might be a real goal to achieve, it was not as well paying as people might think. And this was further shown to me when I got a promotion and the offering was a $1,000 a year raise. And so I just thought, how can this be that then I'm a full-time professor and I do many other gigs in order to make ends meet? So get to 2020, I was burnt out. I welcomed the idea that I didn't have to commute anymore, that I could teach all of my university classes online, and I had like 10 to 12 extra hours in my week. It was incredible. And I just naturally started doing more and more with my coaching. So within a span of a few months, my professor job felt like my part time job and my coaching felt like my full-time job. And that's when I knew I was going to probably make a transition.
[00:25:39.910] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I can hear it in your voice when you're describing the rush to get up at 445 and to get through your day, describe what that feels like, because maybe not everyone knows what that feels like, but it sounds intense.
[00:25:56.950] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. I thought that anxiety and regular panic attacks, I thought that that was normal because it just became the norm. It became the norm to not taste my food, to huff it down on a drive, to go to teach it another thing. It became normal that my son might be at daycare until almost six at night when he was young. And I knew deep in my heart that that did not feel okay to me. And so I started making changes, honestly, before the pandemic began. I packed all of my teaching into three days a week so that the other two, I could be with my son more because that way of living, that complete frenetic nervous system just feels like your hair is constantly on fire. It feels like your whole body body is on fire all the time and you can never settle or be present with yourself or other people. And it was only when I was teaching that I could be fully present. And it was only when I was with my family that I could really try to be present, and yet I had a million to do's in the back of my head.
[00:27:18.160] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And so the whisper started much before the pandemic, that this isn't sustainable. But the problem was I didn't see any way around it. So the pandemic suddenly opened up a new avenue.
[00:27:35.000] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
My goodness, the description of being on fire. That's so well said. It's so descriptive. It is vivid. You can imagine what that is and how terrifying that can be and how your nervous system doesn't know how to calm down from that if it's in it seven days a week or five days a week. And do you remember a specific moment where you're like, That's it. I just can't do this anymore?
[00:27:59.050] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Oh, my gosh. There were multiple things. One, the whole $1,000 salary raise felt like a slap in the face because I think it amounted to $10 per paycheck or something per week. And I just thought, so I'm giving up my time with my child son for this? So that was a major moment of just like, what am I climbing this ladder so hard for? So it was partially that. And it was definitely moments of when I would have anxiety attacks, especially when I was with my family and having them at completely normal times, like the dinner. We're just sitting at the dinner table and this rush would come over me and I would feel like I was having a heart attack. And I was like, This can't be normal. So between the fact that I would just think about all I was having to do professionally to make ends meet and then seeing that, okay, and then the time that I am with my family, I can't even be here because my body is reacting. Those were some of the big indicators, as well as the whisperings in my journal. I still kept a pretty regular journal practice.
[00:29:31.330] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And I tell the truth in my journal. And I was telling the truth to myself for a while that there has to be another way. I've got it. There has to be a different way.
[00:29:43.110] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And how did you give yourself permission to then change?
[00:29:48.190] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
It started when my son was going to kindergarten. I just said to my director, I want to get my son off the bus. I want to be the one to get him off the bus. I don't want him going to after school care. I want to be there waiting for him at the bus stop. And she was incredibly supportive. But of course, it had to go through the chair of the department. And I just said, I don't care what I have to do on the days that I'm here and when I'm here, but if we can arrange all my classes back to back, I don't care because I want to be around him. So it was making it home at 3:30 rather than 6 o'clock at night. And so that was one of the first changes. And then it was an allowing myself to be, in my mind, mediocre. I don't have to be the first one in the office. I don't have to be the last one out. I don't have to be on all the committees. It was allowing myself to, in my perfectionist brain, honestly, slack off a little bit because I thought, Wait a minute, so I'm getting paid the same amount whether I'm on 17 committees or two.
[00:31:09.780] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
So I started committing to less. My teaching always stayed the same. I always give my students my whole heart. But I started seeing what could be stripped away. And then I started doing a lot more advocating for myself, which is not exactly something that was totally modeled because I think my mom is incredible, but I think she also has a bit of scarcity mentality of like, oh, boy, don't rock the boat too much. And I just got to a point where I was like, I have a kid, I have a family, I have to provide for my family, and I'm going to ask for what I need in these situations. It doesn't make me an unkind person. It makes me clear about my needs.
[00:31:58.280] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That is so well said. You really need to show up for your family and ask for what you should be getting compensated for. Absolutely. These are not your own personal expenses. These are professionally incurred expenses. So very well done on your part. You said something earlier I wanted you to elaborate a little bit. Tell me more about what it means for you to have a perfectionist brain.
[00:32:23.140] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Oh, gosh, it is such a blessing and a curse. But I have a very true driven personality, which I deeply am grateful for about myself. And yet it can be to my own detriment that I have such high expectations of myself and other people that are just really oftentimes just unmeetable and cause me great heartache. So this same perfectionism that allows me to hyper focus and have endurance to write and edit and publish a book can be the same perfectionism that never lets me stop or rest or doesn't know when that writing is finally finished. Just stop already. It needs to be done. Perfectionism is the thief of joy, and done is better than perfect often. But I read a little story about this in my book that just came out called Come Home to Your Heart. And it's called Put the Paintbrush Down. Essentially, this is a really good example of how my brain works. So my husband and I went to a painting class. You know those classes where it's a date night. Couples go and they paint a canvas together. In this particular one, it would be like one partner paints the trees, the other partner paints the water.
[00:33:50.220] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And so you're both working on the same picture, but your artistry is combined. And Jamie, my husband, would just paint the trees, put his paint brush down, have a sip of wine. And he was enjoying himself. I was touch, touch, touching up, just touch, touch, touch. And I'm just becoming more and more, This has to be right and perfect. And I couldn't put the paint brush down. And it finally comes to the point of painting the cardinal. And I couldn't find a skinny brush. So suddenly this cardinal was like a pterodactyl. It was gigantic. And I thought, Oh, my God. I have to change the trees to make it so that it's ratio to the bird. And then I have to change the whole thing. I am just touching up the entire portrait. Jamie was like, Honey, put the paint brush down already. And this is like a million times a day, every day in my life. And so we have this motto now when he sees me touching up anything, he'll just say, Put the paintbrush down.
[00:35:08.940] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I want to know, in your mind now, because you've done so much in your life, where do you find the endurance to do this? Because it's a lot.
[00:35:19.620] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah, I do think part of it is just in me. So I was on the track team in high school, and when they put me as a sprinter, I was still in the blocks when people were at the finish line. So as sprinter, I am not. But when they put me in long distance running, I could do that. I can sustain energy over time rather than just everything in a quick burst. And there's something about writing that I just have a high tolerance for the amount of time that it takes. And I guess I just can't not do it. I can't start a project that I'm deeply passionate about and just let it go. It just seems impossible to me. That is actually when the other part of me that is not a perfectionist comes through, because in order to have the endurance, I have to be really self compassionate that it's not going to be perfect, that there will be rejections along the way, that it's going to take more time than you ever imagined. I have, luckily, equal parts, perfection and self compassion, and that is helpful in staying the course. I know deep down that for any of the writers that I work with, that talent can only take you so far.
[00:36:55.830] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
You have to have the dedication and endurance to stay the course. And the writers that I coach who have the endurance over the talent will always succeed. I know I'm not the world's best writer, but I am really dedicated to making a story the best that it can be and then having the courage to put it out in the world, even though it is not perfect.
[00:37:23.870] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
So how quickly do you make shifts in your decision making as an entrepreneur now?
[00:37:29.430] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
I mean, there's so much trial and error. When I first went full-time with my LLC, it would be like, teach a course. It didn't get enough enrollment, or something was off. Okay, pivot. So I can pivot quickly. I guess the thing is not to burn the whole house down in the meantime. So it's like, okay, something about this isn't working. What are the parts that are beneficial, that are successful and pivoting based on those factors? So I think that I can make quick decisions because I take a moment to reflect and take stock of did this work, did it not work? But I'm human, too, and I can also overthink the heck out of something for sure. If overthinking was a job, I'd be a millionaire.
[00:38:32.580] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It's hard not to overthink. I don't know if we're wired for super analysis all the time, but yeah, you're absolutely right.
[00:38:40.330] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
I think what helps, I should backtrack for a second, what helps is just having a date at which the thing is going to happen. So I can't overthink it forever. I put a course out in the world. Okay, it starts August 10th. All right. Well, I can only overthink it up until then. So a lot of times what I do to trick my overthinking part is that if I have an idea for a course or a retreat before I can talk myself out of it, I'll put it out into the world through my newsletter, on my website, on social media and just go, Okay, this is happening on these dates. So now there's the peer pressure of following through. So I can't hem and haw over should I do this or should I not? I just have to put it out there so that the world holds me accountable, essentially.
[00:39:28.000] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I like it. Like a self imposed deadline. You're talking about the workshops and the retreats that you do with your students. I'm very curious to know, what have you learned from your students? The stories that they must write and talk about are very intimate and may also be very difficult to tell. And why is it so important for you to do what you do for your students?
[00:39:55.570] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Oh, my gosh. I mean, it's everything. The women who tend to find me, we find each other, are women who've been through something really hard and sometimes traumatic. And they tend to be people who are on their own self growth journeys. So when they're writing their essays and memoirs, they're holding really vulnerable stories. And so I feel a deep honor that one would even share it with me and then trust me and enough to help them put it out in the world. And I think because I was a little girl on the south side of Chicago, learning about the rest of the world through books, I see the impact that a book and a story can have on a person. And so it feels like a mission to me to help these women get their stories out. And they cover some very important topics from adoption to widowhood, to health journeys, to suicide, to, oh, my gosh, parenting, just everything. And it really is a deep trust that I feel when they allow me to work with them because the pride that they feel when they put it out in the world and then get letters from readers about how impactful that book or that essay was. It's everything.
[00:41:37.360] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It's so valuable. It is valuable to society to put out the stories, to have people's voices heard, whether it's in writing or in audiobook format. I think you're playing such an important role in helping women put out important stories, the ones that we don't always talk about, like suicide or adoption or the ones that you listed earlier. They're tough stories and not everyone wants to talk about them. They're usually swept under the rug or forgotten or it's too painful to talk about. So maybe writing is a form of therapy for some people as well. Do you find that?
[00:42:15.420] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. I find that they go through stages. So first they write to process it themselves. And then I talk to them about, okay, now it's your job. If you do want to put it out in the world, then you have to take these, essentially, therapeutic journal entries and craft them into a narrative that readers and listeners want to read and hear. And that actually helps. It almost gets it out of their body. And now they're looking at it and making meaning of their story. So they're still getting deep therapeutic benefits. But then now they're going, how can and will this help other people? And that's the big part of it. And sometimes they're talking about their stories on my podcast or yes, audiobooks, or they put their book out in the world, or they publish their essay in a major magazine. And suddenly there is this looking at the thing, it's no longer living inside of their bodies anymore, causing this pulsing pain. Of course, it will always be there, the result of whatever hardship, but it is no longer taking up all of this space inside of their bodies. And now it's out of them and a tool for other people to use.
[00:43:37.360] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
So whether it's other people who are learning about infertility and how to advocate for themselves or, okay, reading a book by one of my authors who went through her MS journey and learned how to deal with it through holistic and functional medicine, becomes a tool for readers.
[00:43:57.960] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's very insightful. I'm...My mouth is open listening to this because I am going, Wow, it's an incredible form of therapy. It's an incredible form of sharing. And I love what you're doing. I just wanted to say that. One more thing. And I'm very curious because you were first and foremost a writer and a professor. And now do you see yourself also as an entrepreneur?
[00:44:23.470] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Definitely. And I wear that title with pride because while I didn't go to business school, I have a deep sense of what my audience needs and how I compare that with my skills and expertise and try to give them workshops and retreats that are exactly what they need. And many of the times it's me just thinking about, what have I loved as a student and what do I want? If I I were looking for a retreat, what description would I read and go, Sign me up. So I'm basically just taking all the goodness that has been poured into me and thinking, Okay, how can I give that to other people? And then from the entrepreneurial lens, I feel really grateful that we can have the kinds of jobs that we do where we make our own way. We have the schedules that we want. We put out the offerings that we want to do, that we have agency and we have the ability to do so much goodness without feeling the weight and pressure of a boss or a corporation that can sometimes stifle us. So I certainly now identify as an entrepreneur.
[00:46:01.580] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
How have you changed over the years? Do you see the evolution? Do you have any descriptors for that?
[00:46:09.050] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. My values have completely shifted. I am someone who used to really love the accolades that success brought because I feel like I felt like I had something to prove as someone coming from a working class background, as being the first person in my family to graduate college and go to grad school, it felt like a feather in my cap. Each time, it was like, Oh, I'm a professor now, and I got this rank and I'm doing this thing. But the reward, oftentimes for the accolade, felt empty. And it led to just this deep striving mentality. And then it didn't feel like... It's like the carrot was always being dangled. And then you never get the carrot. Or when you do, you don't feel satisfied by the carrot. And I'm going, Well, what is this all for? So I think the biggest change really happened in the midst of the pandemic. My father was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away very quickly a year later. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was so unexpected. And he was 57 when he passed, and he had worked his whole life. I mean, weekends, nights. He was such a hard worker, and yet so much of that work was at the expense of so many other things.
[00:47:51.620] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
He was working hard to get that retirement to finally do what he wanted to do, and he never got that. He wanted to move to a sunny place. He had signed a lease to move to Florida about a month before he passed, and he was packing to move. And he was going to finally do more of the deep sea fishing he loved and all these things. And when he passed, that had a major impact on me and my family that we weren't going to do our original plan, which was just work, work, work and wait to retirement to move to a sunny place. We wanted to accelerate things. And so I think a lot of my striving myths were busted at that point. Does it fully lead to the satisfaction you want? Not always. And so we relocated. We now live in Florida, coincidentally. And my life is one of I will always be passionate and put my energy into writing and my business, but not at the expense of myself or my family. And I want to live an intentional life now, not later.
[00:49:09.040] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Wow. It is moments like that that really make you realize it's now. We have to do things now. You don't wait till later. If there's something important, if there's something inspiring, something you need to do, you do it now. You don't wait till retirement. If you can help it, really, if you have the means.
[00:49:29.080] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. So many of the women that I coach who want to have a book or an essay out in the world, I press them to get it done and out and not have these stories living on their laptop because many of these women want to leave a legacy through their writing. And it's like, the time is now. Put it out now. There's so many stories from my own ancestors I wish I had now. So it feels like this intentional way of living not only feels like a way of living, but also it translates into the writing of I don't him and haw so much anymore about is that word perfect for it's like, Is that word perfect? It's like, You have an important message. Put it out in the world now. I'm not going to go about things recklessly or without thought, but I'm no longer going to wait on things so long. And I encourage the people I work with to really, really take on their writing dreams and make them a reality, finally, because so many of them have just been sitting on a book or story for a decade, and it's time to get it out in the world.
[00:50:41.950] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Yes, I. Encourage that, too. One last thing. As you were talking earlier about when you were younger, walking to school or to the library and you had a book in your hand and you were reading as you were walking, I just had the image of what children do today with their phones. But you were doing it back then with a book, so you were the original scroller.
[00:51:05.380] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
That's so true. And now it's a taste of my own medicine. Our son loves reading and we have to tell him no books, no at dinner. We have to tell him he'll be in the bathroom for a while and one of us is waiting to take a shower or something and I'll say, Are you reading in there? So yeah, I guess this is a good distraction to have, though.
[00:51:31.420] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's right. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. Thank you so much to Nadine Kenney Johnstone. You can learn more about WriteWELL through the link in the episode description. If you enjoyed my conversation with Nadine, we would love it if you could please rate and review this podcast wherever you listen. Reviews help us to reach other listeners who would benefit from hearing Nadine's story, and it truly means a lot to us. And So, She Left is made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee. We'll be back next Wednesday with a new episode. Our music is by Chris Zabrisky, edited for your enjoyment. You can find a list of all the songs you heard here in the Episode Notes. I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos, and thanks for listening.